I nod. “It is. But my great-great-aunt painted it many years ago and promised it to me when she passed. It’s been hanging there ever since. I’m pretty fond of it, honestly.”
Perhaps that’s why I became so enamored of Daisy so quickly. Normally, I don’t take a weighted interest in anyone’s life but my own.
Daisy nods, her eyes watching me closely for a long moment before moving on almost suddenly.
“What’s down this way?” she asks with a small jerk of her head toward the hallway.
I raise my eyebrows, and she laughs, adding, “Right. Only one way to find out with Mr. Mysterious.”
She walks to the end of the hallway, peeking in briefly to a linen closet and a half bathroom on the way, and then opens the door—after a nod of permission from me—to my bedroom.
The gray brick on the opposite wall stands out in the light from the windows, and the industrial shelving on one side of it boasts its emptiness.
“There’s nothing on those shelves,” Daisy points out immediately, making me laugh.
“I know.”
She shakes her head and then startles, her head jerking toward me. “Is that it?”
“What do you mean? To the apartment?”
“Yes. To the apartment. That’s it?”
I shrug. “Yeah.”
“There’s…there’s only one bedroom in this apartment?”
I raise my eyebrows, and she immediately shakes her head. A long-winded babble is coming, I can feel it.
“How is that possible? H-how? I googled your building, and this building doesn’t look like the kind of building that has apartments with only one bedroom in it.”
“I didn’t know that was discernible from the outside.”
“Well, it’s not! Obviously! Because here I am in a building that shouldn’t have any one-bedroom apartments, in a one-bedroom apartment. Your house in Vegas has multiple bedrooms, Flynn. Why doesn’t this have multiple bedrooms?”
“Because this isn’t Vegas. This is New York. And I’ve only ever been able to sleep in one bed at a time.”
“You’re not funny right now. This isn’t funny. Where am I supposed to sleep?”
I glance to the bed and back at her, and her eyes spin like flying UFOs. “In the bed with you? Every night?”
“Only the nights you want to be in a bed.”
“This isn’t funny, Flynn!”
“Listen, Dais, it is what it is. It’s not a big deal. It’s not like we haven’t slept in a bed together before.”
“We didn’t sleep in that bed at all, Flynn.”
No, we definitely didn’t sleep, and it was fucking glorious.
I grin, and she practically chokes on her own saliva.
“Come on,” I tell her, leaving the room. “Let’s go. You can worry about the bed later.”
“What? Go? Where are we going?”
I don’t answer. No. I don’t dare answer.
Daisy
Flynn pulls to a stop in front of a gorgeous Uptown brownstone that makes me believe in the movie version of New York. The trees are large and mature, and the street is calm. I can practically picture Tom Hanks asking Meg Ryan what would have happened with them if they hadn’t been enemies from the start.
I don’t know why we’re here, though, and the anticipation has me on edge. Does Flynn have another house here? Perhaps with more than one bedroom?
I nearly laugh aloud at myself, but Flynn opening my door and holding out a hand to help me climb out of his Range Rover seems to startle it right out of me.
“Where are we?”
He doesn’t answer, instead guiding me across the sidewalk and up the steps to ring the doorbell. You don’t ring the doorbell at your own house. “Uh…” I look around in confusion. “Are we at someone’s house?”
“Yeah,” he answers matter-of-factly. “My sister Winnie’s.”
“What?!” I question, but he’s already added knocking to his arrival alert system, apparently unsatisfied with the speed of response from the bell. “Flynn. This is your family’s house?”
He nods, completely at ease with the insane situation. “It’s family dinner night.”
“Are you kidding me?” I retort as quietly as I can, but it’s hard to have volume control when your heart is pounding in your damn ears. “You didn’t think I needed time to prepare? I barely know you. You barely know me! I mean, what are we even going to tell them? What if they ask—”
“Shoot!” Flynn says suddenly, tapping me on the back and turning around. “I forgot the cookies in the car. Be right back.”
I swing my hips hard and lunge for his wrist as he retreats, but it’s too late. He’s down the steps and passing the couple of spots to the car and walking around to the trunk in no time.
The front door swings open, and my nervous jaw clamps closed like a Venus flytrap.
“Uh, hey,” an attractive, dark-haired man I’ve never seen before says, looking around me curiously. “Can I help you?”
Everything inside me tries to speak, but I’m, for all intents and purposes, mute for the foreseeable future. My throat feels thick and my vocal cords paralyzed. I don’t know what to say, so I hope Flynn hurries the fuck up or something.
The door swings open behind the now narrow-eyed man with a little puff of spring wind, revealing another man I actually know, walking down the hallway toward us.
The five-hundred-dollar casino chip gifter. Flynn’s brother Ty.
When my eyes lock on him with what must be recognition, the man at the door turns toward him and groans loudly. “Oh. She’s with you. I should have fucking known.”
Without another word or even a hello, the man retreats back down the hallway, smacking Ty on the shoulder as he goes. Ty approaches the door and me, his eyebrows drawn together curiously.
With a long look up and down my body and face, he finally shrugs. “Well, you certainly are my type. Did I ask you to come here tonight?”
“No,” I manage to murmur with a shake of my head. God, apparently, he was so drunk that day, he doesn’t even remember me. “I’m—”
But he already has me by the elbow and pulls me inside. “Come on. Let’s head to the kitchen and get a drink. We’re about to start dinner soon.”
I twist frantically to look over my shoulder, searching for Flynn with wild eyes as the door closes behind me.
Oh my God. How did you manage this one, Daisy? Not only have you entrapped one Winslow into marrying you for a green card, now you’ve got another brother thinking he’s dating you?!
Before I know it, we’re standing in the center of a bustling kitchen, and there are people pretty much everywhere. Loud chatter, laughter, and the sounds and smells of dinner being made overwhelm my senses.
“Well, dang!” Another attractive guy with light-brown hair and blazing blue eyes I recognize as another one of Flynn’s brothers shouts at the top of his lungs. “I thought that was gonna be Flynn at the door. For once, I can actually attend family dinner because we’re not working around Winnie’s schedule and doing it on nights I’m at work. I’m ready to enjoy this feast!”
“Stop whining, Jude,” a beautiful—almost ethereally, really—trim brunette with smoldering green eyes tells him. “You know Flynn will be here any minute. He’s reliable.”
Ty laughs beside me, and a whole new wave of panic renews as he wraps an arm around my shoulders. “Unlike the rest of us, right, Sophie?”